Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Maggie and the Stars

Last night was a beautiful late summer night. We got out Maggie's trike and went for a little ride. The neighborhood is a little hilly, so she struggled a little, but still had a lot of fun. As the sun went down, we continued to hang out in the front yard and were rewarded for this by our neighbor who was trying to get rid of some tomatoes (I will be making some salsa later this week as I have a lovely tangerine pepper plant that has some beautiful orange peppers just waiting to be picked).

In the western sky, a star shown very brightly and Maggie pointed it out. Coincidentally, I had listened to NPR on the way home and a short segment from "Earth Sky" just happened to be on Venus, which was the star we were looking at. So I thought I would use this as a little astronomy lesson for Maggie.

Me: Maggie, that star is a planet called Venus.

Maggie: It's a star planet!

Me: That's right. And it's the third brightest thing object in the sky. Do you know what's brighter than Venus?